CoffeeT00lz.com

I can't possibly be the only person who's had it with the "Coffee Exposed" sponsored Google link that keeps showing up in my Gmail "Web Clips" box. A snap to illustrate, or to jog your memory, depending:



Apparently, there's some "shocking secret" coffee companies don't want me to know, but is it SFW?

There's a not-so-secret I want the makers of coffeefool.com to know: you don't entice me to read your exposé by forcing me to acknowledge in the very link I click that I am a "coffee fool" who's been conned by coffee companies. Thanks for trying to remove the scales from my eyes, but might I suggest a less condescending approach? You sound like all those self-appointed enlighteners of the masses who are more worried about what's allegedly wrong with Kansas than what's wrong with their own message or organizing.

And we all know that allegedly "shocking" secrets almost never deliver, anyway, so I'm doubly put off. And then there's the fact that I've ignored it a million times already, and resent having to ignore it again. But since, like good capitalists, you've purchased a sponsored link, you've taken that choice away from me.

Go the fuck away, already.

tags technorati : coffee, coffeefool.com

Fear is Freedom

So much to blog, so little time. An op-ed in today's NYT describes the growing structural, economic entrenchment of the War on Terror state of emergency.

Back [in the 1980s, on the Montana-Alberta border], if we had seen a man on horseback riding along the border, standing in his stirrups to look around, we would have assumed that he was a rancher looking for straying livestock. Today, we’d have to consider the possibility that he was an operative for Operation Noble Mustang, in which wild horses from Bureau of Land Management holdings in the West are trained by prison inmates for use by border patrolmen on the lookout for smugglers and terrorists trying to enter the United States from Canada. [ . . . ]

It’s a new, strange story. In a part of the country that was built on the most extravagant homesteaders’ and oil-drillers’ hopes for the future, economic health in this new century rides largely on the continued threat of threat itself.

And now the House has gone and legislated Bush's freedom to eavesdrop on any foreign communication routed through the US, no warrant required. You're welcome, Ameria: kiss your fucking Fourth Amendment goodbye. No need to thank us.

When people see the US as the biggest threat to democracy in the world, they can prove their case by pointing to the contracting rights of US citizens. We do the "terrorists'" work for them. Well done, George. Well done, Democrat representatives. Well done, modern-day yellow dog Dems, and nu skool "we hate big government jackboots" Republicans. Well done, Americans who are too busy being afraid of or hating al-Qa'ida to pay any attention to what their own government is doing to them.

tags technorati : Freedom, Constitution, Politics, Surveillance, War on Terror

 

Bottled Water and Car Escape Tools

Dave, who has no blog of his own (or I would link to it), and who probably hates me calling him Dave, notes the new top-sellers in the Automotive category at Amazon:


The LifeHammer item page tags the item as a "Hot Deal" at 4cents off (surely it is destined to be the Club of the 2000s), and exhorts us to hurry up and wait for our supplemental insurance policy:

Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.

Hurry, order now and we'll ship this item when it becomes available. You can cancel your order at any time. Your credit card will not be charged until we have shipped your order. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

So, in the absence of quality drinking water, we filter our water and drink it from innumerable plastic bottles (those of us who can afford it), and in the absence of safe bridges, we we will now install LifeHammers in our cars.

What's the answer for terrorists? Oh, right: trust your mechanic.

I can't wait to see if these things become the Club of the 2000s. At least people seem still concerned about keeping their cars clean.

tags technorati : LifeHammer, Minneapolis, Bridge Collapse